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10 Nov 2015

Conservatives caught making up statistics

Ministerial Code of Conduct: 1.2.c.It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister;

Once again our Prime Minister is in the news for using dodgy statistics. This is a regular story in the British press, but no one ever seems to connect up the stories. So, what follows is the beginnings of a list of news stories about the Conservative (and Labour) leaders being caught out lying and using dodgy statistics. Just for the record.

Nov 2015

David Cameron, there aren't 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria - and whoever heard of a moderate with a Kalashnikov, anyway? "Telling the House of Commons about the 70,000 “moderate” fighters deployed in Syria was not just lying in the sense that Tony Blair lied – because Blair persuaded himself to believe in his own dishonesty – but something approaching burlesque. It was whimsy – ridiculous, comic, grotesque, ludicrous. It came close to a unique form of tragic pantomime. " The Independent.

David Cameron REFUSES to answer if he lied about Lord Ashcroft’s ‘nom dom’ tax status. Vox Political

Jeremy Hunt could be SACKED for 'misleading' public over weekend hospital deaths. DAVID CAMERON could be forced to sack Jeremy Hunt after the health secretary allegedly misled Parliament - and the public - over weekend hospital death figures. The Tory minister has continually said 11,000 extra deaths occurred in 2013-2014 as a result of admission to hospital over the weekend - but has omitted the next part of the research report he is quoting which says "to assume they are avoidable would be rash and misleading". Express

Mar 2015

David Cameron's numbers problem: From NHS spending to immigration caps – how the Tories can't get their figures straight. Five stats that show you shouldn't always take the Conservatives at face value - Independent.

Oct 2014

Cameron 'rebuked' over debt claims. David Cameron has been handed another thinly-veiled rebuke by the statistics watchdog for claiming that Britain has been "paying down its debts".

Labour lodged a complaint about the Prime Minister's loose use of language after he used his Tory conference speech to hail progress in turning round the country's finances. - Daily Mail

Sep 2014

David Cameron strongly rebuked for making false claims about immigration. In July, the Prime Minister wrote in a newspaper that “while most new jobs used to go to foreign workers, in the past year more than three-quarters have gone to British workers”. Newspaper watchdog the Press Complaints Commission ruled his claim was “baseless”. It added: “The statistics to which the PM referred had been significantly misrepresented.” Mirror

Aug 2014

David Cameron has been rebuked for claiming that the majority of new jobs created last year were taken by UK nationals when figures for new jobs are not collected by the official statistics body. - Guardian

Feb 2014

Coalition rebuked again by UK Statistics Authority- this time on flood defence spending
Statistics head Andrew Dilnot says a Treasury graph on infrastructure left readers with "a false impression of the relative size of investment between sectors". - New Statesman

George Osborne rebuked for boasting he halved £1.7bn EU surcharge. Treasury committee stops short of saying chancellor misled parliament by claiming he won the bill reduction when the surcharge was halved by the UK’s automatic rebate. Guardian

June 2013

Senior Conservative ministers have been rebuked for attempting to cover up Government statistics showing one of their key housing policies is not working. - Independent

May 2013

Duncan Smith rebuked by ONS for misuse of benefit statistics. The claim that 8,000 people moved into work as a result of the benefit cap is "unsupported by the official statistics", says the UK Statistics Authority. - New Statesman. Also "Lies, damned lies and Iain Duncan Smith" examines the pattern of lying. - Guardian

"Grant Shapps rebuked by UK Statistics Authority for misrepresenting benefit figures. Yet another Conservative politician is caught making it up." - New Statesman.

Apr 2013

Iain Duncan Smith "Around 1 million people have been stuck on a working-age benefit for at least three out of the past four years, despite being judged capable of preparing or looking for work."

“David Cameron has received a reprimand from the official statistics watchdog over his claim that the government was "paying down Britain's debts". - Guardian

Dec 2012

Osborne “The good news is that we are in government after 13 years of a disastrous Labour administration that brought our country to the brink of bankruptcy.” - Conservative Party website

The UK was never at risk of bankruptcy. Office for Budget Responsibility chief Robert Chote dismisses the “danger of insolvency”. New Statesman.

"The UK Statistics Authority upheld a complaint by Labour about government claims the NHS budget had increased in real-terms in the past two years. The watchdog found the best-available Treasury data suggested real-terms health spending was lower in 2011-12 than in 2009-10 " - BBC

Oct 2012

“David Cameron has been corrected by the Treasury’s own forecaster over claims that cuts in public spending are not reducing economic growth. The Office for Budget Responsibility told the Prime Minister that it does believe that cutting public spending will reduce economic growth in the short term” - Huffington Post

Andrew Dilnot, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, has today expressed ‘concern’ about claims made by the Department for Education (DfE) on the UK’s supposed slump in international school achievement league tables. - Full Fact

Apr 2012

The home secretary [Theresa May] is under fire for failing to comply with a high court order to bring an asylum seeker who is in hiding in Azerbaijan back to Britain. The Border Agency forcibly removed the man, a Turkish national, from the UK in March despite a court order being issued before he boarded the plane preventing officials from deporting him. - Guardian

Jan 2012

Iain Duncan Smith and the Department of Work and Pensions have been accused of publishing misleading immigration figures that were "highly vulnerable to misinterpretation". - Huffington Post

Feb 2010

The chair of the UK Statistics Authority has told shadow home secretary Chris Grayling he "must take issue" with claims made by the Tories.

He warned they were "likely to mislead the public" if they compared two sets of statistics without explaining they were collected in different ways. - Sky News

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